Bill Maher got it right on immigration last week. On
Real Time last Friday (4/7/2006), he pointed out the obvious: there are so many jobs for immigrants because the minimum wage is too low.
And finally, New Rule: Don't blame illegal immigrants for driving down wages. Blame Congress. Republicans in Congress have to stop saying that the problem with Mexicans coming over the border is they keep wages down. You know what keeps wages down? The fact that Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage since 1997. 1997, when my dealer still had a beeper! Car dealer, car dealer, what did I say?
Yes, news flash: Congress controls what the minimum wage is. Who did you think it was, the valet parking team at Tony Roma's? And upping the minimum wage would affect wages. It has to. The word "wage" is right in it. Even George Bush could understand that. Maybe not. The point is, the elephant in the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals. So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never dreamed of.
The federal minimum wage has been set at $5.15 an hour since 1997. However, adjusted for inflation it had its greatest value in 1968. At that time the minimum wage was $1.60/hour, or $8.85 in 2005 dollars. California, where about 25% of illegal immigrants live, has a state minimum wage of $6.75/hour, and even that isn't enough to live on here. In fact, given the relatively high cost of living here, the California minimum wage is probably harder to get by on here than the federal minimum wage in many other states.
Working a 40-hour-a-week job at minimum wage earns about $10,700 before taxes. The 2005 HHS Poverty Guidelines put the poverty level for a family of four at $19,350. That means that a married couple raising two children where both parents work full-time at minium wage will still be under the poverty line (taking into account taxes and lost wages due to missed days).
I think this is an important piece of the problem. Most people aren't willing to work for less money than they need to live. The reason there are so many jobs for immigrants is that there are so many jobs that don't pay enough to live on.
President Bush keeps claiming that our economy is producing new jobs. What he never admits is that the new jobs pay less than the jobs that we lose to offshoring, so the earning power of the working class has been following a steady decline. Meanwhile the highest paid in this country enjoy disproportionate tax cuts and wage increases. The salaries of corporate executives compared to the people who work for them continue to leap ahead. The ratio of salaries between CEOs and workers is now over 400-to-1, up from 40-to-1 in the early 1980s.
President Bush's proposal for a guest worker program is an attempt to institutionalize a second-class workforce that can be employed at sub-poverty wages. A better solution is for Congress to act to raise the minimum wage. A livable minimum wage will help correct the problems that create the opening for illegal immigration. If jobs pay enough to live on, Americans will do the jobs. If there aren't jobs for immigrants, there will be less motivation to enter the country illegally.